Pullach, 21 Dezember 2010 – The world's northernmost natural gas liquefaction plant Hammerfest LNG on the island Melkøya, 800 km north of the Arctic Circle near Hammerfest in Norway, had started commercial production by beginning 2008 and produces now with a performance of up to 104 percent of its design capacity. A performance test will be carried out after the turnaround in Q2 2011, in order to finally verify plant performance. On the occasion of the hundredth loading of a LNG tanker The Linde Group's Engineering Division as general contractor and technology supplier makes a positive assessment of the project.

Dr Aldo Belloni, Member of the Executive Board of Linde AG, draws his attention to the future of the LNG business: "With the successful development and realisation of this LNG technology in a large plant scale Linde has established its universally applicable, European technology alternative in the LNG market. Melkøya is for us from both a technical and a strategic view a valuable reference project."

The plant is a unique technology project of the European natural gas industry and EPC industry. The LNG base load plant with a capacity of 4.3 million tons LNG per year is based on a liquefaction process, jointly developed by Statoil and Linde, that is optimised for the arctic conditions, the so called Mixed Fluid Cascade (MFC®). With the successful commercialisation of this novel process and Linde's complementary process solutions for warm climate zones, for the first time a proven European LNG technology is available for the growing LNG market. This process designed especially for large train capacities is the only serious alternative to the two up to now dominating American technologies for large-scale plants. With its established solutions for small and mid-scale LNG plants and its future-oriented developments at the floating LNG plants, Linde has access to a comprehensive portfolio of LNG technologies.

Hammerfest LNG combines multiple innovative, energy efficient and pioneering elements. Due to limited plot space available and difficult construction conditions the plant was designed very compact and modular. The heart of the plant is the floating central process module with a weight of 35,000 tons. This largest ever built LNG plant module was pre-fabricated in a Spanish yard and transported 2,700 nautical miles to the island Melkøya. Moreover, Hammerfest LNG uses for the first time an efficient and direct sea water cooling system which is suitable for arctic weather conditions.

Trend-setting features also include the complete separation of CO2 from the process gas and its reinjection into a reservoir under the seabed as well as the realisation of a flareless plant operation. With the objective to enhance plant availability for the first time in a world scale LNG plant all main compressors are electrically driven.

The Linde Group is a world leading gases and engineering company with almost 48,000 employees working in more than 100 countries worldwide. In the 2009 financial year it achieved sales of EUR 11.2 bn. The strategy of The Linde Group is geared towards sustainable earnings-based growth and focuses on the expansion of its international business with forward-looking products and services. Linde acts responsibly towards its share­holders, business partners, employees, society and the environment - in every one of its business areas, regions and locations across the globe. Linde is committed to technologies and products that unite the goals of customer value and sustainable development.